Monday, June 12, 2017

Sermon for Trinity Sunday: "Always"

I’ve always loved the old standards – I heard my parents
sitting at the piano and singing and playing many of them:

Beautiful Brown
Eyes, I Dream of Jeannie, Blue Skies…. but one of my very favorites is this one:

I’ll be loving you Always

With a love that’s true Always.

When the things you’ve planned

Need a helping hand

I will understand,

Always, Always….

Always..

That’s the song,
and that’s the word today:Always.The song was a wedding present from Irving
Berlin to his wife.

So ALWAYS is a promise – like the vows we make to one
another – for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health – for better and for
worse….

And ALWAYS is Jesus’ promise to us, at the very end of
gospel:I am with you always, even to
the end of the age.

It’s right there in this short passage of scripture –
which in four verses, gives us both promise and challenge.

There they are, just eleven disciples, on the mountain
with Jesus.And there they worship him.

But some of them are
doubting.

(I wonder about that. – Even Jesus rising from the dead can’t
totally erase their doubt.)

There Jesus promises them that all authority in heaven
and on earth has been given to him

– even though there will be plenty of opportunities to
doubt this reality

– when their
mission does not seem as successful as it should be – when they are being
questioned

– there Jesus tells them to go into all the world and
make disciples – all the world – just eleven of them

– and then he
gives us this promise.ALWAYS.

It’s so re-assuring to hear isn’t it?

I suppose that’s
why it’s one of my favorite songs.

But I wonder if we really believe it, and I don’t mean
just believe that it’s true, but really LIVE as if it’s true.

I imagine that
there are times when we do – there are times when we can’t help it because that’s all we have.

There are times
when relationships fray, when the diagnosis is grim, when it is clear that we
have taken on a task that is beyond us.And
then it’s all we can do:trust God.

But oftentimes we believe that God is with us while at
the same time also sort of suspecting that everything is really up to us.

I imagine that
this is an occupational hazard for pastors – with our often-long hours and high
expectations,

it’s easy for us
to come to believe that the ministry of the church and its success (whatever
that looks like) depends on us, more than God.

Today is Trinity Sunday, and I imagine that our gospel
reading for today was chosen for just this reason.

Matthew 28 names
the Trinity:Father, Son and Holy
Spirit.

Jesus doesn’t
explain the Trinity and he doesn’t instruct the disciples in the correct
theology of the Trinity.

He just tells them
that it is in this name that they baptize, that it is in this name:Father, Son and Holy Spirit, that they go.

Theologians have
written oceans of books on this subject, and I could try to explain it,

but I suspect that
at the end, the sermon would be both awfully boring, and also
incomprehensible.

How can God be both one and three?Don’t even try to figure it out.

But here’s what I will say:

The first
Christians starting speaking this way about God because of what they were
experiencing.

They believed in one God because they were all good
Jewish men and women.

But they were experiencing something in life and ministry
of Jesus and the presence of the Spirit.

God was still God, Jesus, a human being, was a part of
their experience of God now, and it was the Spirit who kept making Jesus’
presence real in their lives.

They experienced a relationship with God that was somehow
different, because of Jesus.

Maybe that’s why, when I hear Jesus’ promise at the end
of the gospel of Matthew, I immediately think of this song, and that leads me
to the promises of marriage.

The cross and
resurrection are God’s commitment to be with us ALWAYS, through everything, and
in everything.

And this commitment is important not only in our
individual lives, but also as a community of faith, as together we fulfill
Jesus’ instructions, to go into all he world…

When I talk with couples getting married, one of the
exercises we often do is one called Couple Goals.

There each person names 3 personal goals, and three
couple goals, and they talk about how they are going to fulfill them
together.The idea is to get them thinking that they are a team, that their
lives are inextricably connected.

God’s life is inextricably connected with ours.

God became one of us, and suffered all that we suffer,
and when he rose, he sealed the promise, “I am with you always.”

Even death won’t separate us.And we are inextricably connected with God’s
mission – it is us who God sends into the world to bear his image, his message,
and his love.

I can’t imagine
how the disciples thought they were going to fulfill this mission – only eleven
of them, some of them doubting, and a whole world in front of them.

They could only do
it by the mercy and grace of God.

And there is the promise.“I am with you always.”ALWAYS.

I used to visit a retired pastor and his wife.

I remember how,
when I first came to church, they sat in one of the front rows and he would
always take notes during my sermons which was just a little intimidating.

Then later I
found out that he was taking notes because he always called one of his
daughters on Sunday evening so that they could compare notes on the Sunday
Sermon.

His wife began to have dementia, and when she went
into a nursing home, he came to visit her every day.

On the rare occasions that he couldn’t be there, he sent
one of their children

.But every day he
visited her and stayed the day by her side.When I came to visit with
communion, I experienced this.

I could see her anxiety and her fear, and how she would
say, “Don’t leave me.I’m afraid.”

And he would
repeat, over and over, “I’m not going anywhere.You can’t get rid of me.”

And then we would
share communion, and he would help her remember the words, and the promises,
too.

For better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in
sickness and in health…. That’s the way it is with God, and us.Always.

Go therefore into all the world… it is our shared
mission, always.AMEN

Quotes to Ponder

If you know exactly what you are going to do, what's the point of doing it? -- Pablo PIcasso

The central Christian belief is that Christ's death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start. Theories as to how it did this are another matter. A good many theories have been held as to how it works; what all Christians agree on is that it does work. --C.S. Lewis

There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun. --Thomas Merton

We do not think ourselves into new ways of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking. --Richard Rohr

"I love the recklessness of faith. First you leap, and then you grow wings." --William Sloane Coffin